I wrote The Captive’s Psalm as an act of obedience. Blindsided by a storm of distortion, covert psychological abuse, and relational trauma, I lacked every tool needed to navigate it effectively. I faced every obstacle imaginable and endured, under the guise of biblical submission, far longer than I should have.

Many of the struggles I faced were difficult not only because they existed, but because we lacked the language to describe them. Some realities remain hidden in plain sight because the culture around us has no words for them, or has assigned them the wrong names.

It wasn’t until God patiently led me back to Scripture that things began to change. The Bible became more than a book of stories or religious instruction. It became a dictionary.

Through its pages, I learned to distinguish:

• Truth from distortion

• Accountability from blame

• Boundaries from chaos

• Forgiveness from enabling

• Peace from passivity

• Faith from pseudosanctity

I have come to believe that the Bible is how we learn the foreign language God speaks. The more we read it, the more clearly we recognize His voice when He speaks into our lives. Here He can heal our vertical relationship with Him, allowing us to bring those healthy relationship habits into our horizontal earthly relationships. Through His heavenly perspective, we begin to see what was previously hidden, name what was previously confusing, and understand circumstances that once seemed impossible to explain.

The stories and reflections shared here are ultimately meant to draw attention to the faithfulness of God. More than anything, my prayer is that they would awaken a deeper passion for knowing Him through His Word, inspire you to pursue a relationship with Him more intimately than ever before, and encourage you to discover for yourself that He is far more present, personal, and active in our lives than we often realize.